If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Rahm Emanuel - No property taxes

According to the Cook County Assessor's website, the Chicago home of four-term Democrat Congressman and new White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, doesn't exist.

While the address of 4228 North Hermitage is listed as Emanuel's residence on the Illinois State Board of Elections' website, there seems to be no public record of Emanuel ever paying property taxes on this home.

The Cook County Assessor's and Cook County Treasurer's online records indicate Emanuel's Chicago neighbors pay between $3,500 and $7,000 annually. However, Illinois Review has been unable to locate any evidence that the former Clinton advisor and investment banker is paying his fair share of Cook County's notoriously high tax burden.

One reason may be because Emanuel and Rule declared their 4228 North Hermitage home as the office location for their personal non-profit foundation called the "Rahm Emanuel and Amy Rule Charitable Foundation". As the non-profit's headquarters, their home could be exempt from paying property taxes.

In January 2007, USA Today reported on Emanuel's foundation:

The Rahm Emanuel and Amy Rule Charitable Trust was formed in 2002, when the Chicago lawmaker was first elected. The former Clinton White House aide and his wife, Amy Rule, are its only donors. Emanuel was an investment banker after serving in the White House.
The trust reported having $2,900 on hand at the end of 2005 after receiving $34,000 from Emanuel and donating more than $31,000
During the past three years, Emanuel's charity gave nearly $25,000 to the Anshe Emet synagogue and school [a private school that the Rahm/Rule children attend]..., and $15,000 to the foundation run by former president Bill Clinton. It also gave $14,000 to Marwen, a Chicago charity that provides art classes and other educational help to low-income children. Rule is on Marwen's board.

According to the Cook County Assessor's website, the Chicago home of four-term Democrat Congressman and new White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, doesn't exist.

While the address of 4228 North Hermitage is listed as Emanuel's residence on the Illinois State Board of Elections' website, there seems to be no public record of Emanuel ever paying property taxes on this home.

The Cook County Assessor's and Cook County Treasurer's online records indicate Emanuel's Chicago neighbors pay between $3,500 and $7,000 annually. However, Illinois Review has been unable to locate any evidence that the former Clinton advisor and investment banker is paying his fair share of Cook County's notoriously high tax burden.

Don and I could create a "Retired Retriever Foundation" -- a nonprofit tax exempt foundation that would run a retirement home for old retrievers and trial washouts.

We could use our house as headquarters and our kennels for the retriever old folks home, and pay no property taxes.

We could donate $$ to run the retriever retirement home and deduct our donations from our income tax. (You are welcome to donate to our retired retriever foundation, too.)

Of course, the old duffers would need some outside activity so we could load up a few in our truck and take them to trials for old times sake. (We do that now.) We could write off the truck and the mileage.

To keep them fit, the old duffers would need to get some exercise. All our training equipment could be written off, too.

If this won't work in California, maybe we should consider moving to Illinois.

Don's girls:
FC AFC Flyway's Ruby B. Gonia - a Carbon daughter and now a grandma (my avatar)
FC AFC Flyway's Long Tall Sally - Ruby's daughter. Bred to FC AFC Nike which produced Maggie.
Flyway's Iron Lady (Maggie) - Ruby's granddaughter. Maggie's the new puppy in the house. She is now running in the Derby.

This issue originated on a conservative blog called Illinois Review where the editor, Fran Eaton, posted the information shown in this original post. Amost immediately, a variety of peopl began posting comments correcting her error. However, she kept deleting those comments and accused "liberals" of posting lies. Among the commentors deleted was a representative from the Chicago Board of Assessors who wrote:

:

Your posting about Rahm Emanuel’s house being tax exempt is wholly inaccurate. Rep. Emanuel’s house is on the tax rolls, and he and Ms. Rule have paid the taxes on it.
The Emanuel house sits on two lots. For tax purposes, the property is listed as 4232 N. Hermitage Ave. The PIN is 14-18-408-035-0000. As you can see, 4232 N. Hermitage came up as one of the addresses when you searched Emanuel’s block on our web site.
4228 N. Hermitage is listed as the mailing address on the tax records. Had you taken the trouble to contact the Assessor’s office, we could have told you that — and told you that it is not at all uncommon for addresses to be merged for properties on two lots.
According to the Cook County Treasurer’s web site, Emanuel and his wife paid $13,022.60 in property taxes this year."

After a few days of this, Ms Eaton finally replaced her post with a separate story attacking liberals. She never posted a retraction and has deleted all comments questioning the story and finally disabled the comment function on her blog. Before she did this, however, other conservative blogs and an XM radio story picked up her claims and have continued to pass them on as fact. A description of the evolution of this story is at http://illinoisreason.wordpress.com/...f-a-con-smear/